When Should You Re-Paint Your Office Walls

When Should You Re-Paint Your Office Walls

From mid-sized business to a specialty boutique, how your office is painted can say a lot about your business. And while you may not want to change up the paint color every single year, there are some strategic times when a fresh coat and new color of paint can do wonders for your bottom line.

To signify a shift in branding

Companies must carefully choose how their brand is represented through imagery, color, and text, such as logos, merchandising, slogans, and packaging. Branding specialists and logo designers understand how color can communicate your brand philosophy to the world. Whether it’s a newly designed logo you want to coordinate with or a new management team you want to symbolically announce, a new color of paint can be a subliminal sign that your business has taken a new direction, introduced a new product, or revamped services.

The color of your office should get some careful consideration, too, and it should make sense with your overall branding and product or service. For an ad company, warm yellows and striking reds might convey that your company is energetic, young, and innovative. If your business has changed the product lineup to be more eco-friendly, accents of green could communicate that. If you want customers to feel a sense of the exotic or luxury, a deep purple could do the trick. Consulting with a professional office painter is a great way to learn what works for your type of company.

To change with the times

Color trends and interior design trends come and go over the years. The avocado and burnt orange from the 70s should have been left there, along with floor-to-ceiling wood paneling. Even chevron, which was so trendy just a couple years ago, is already dated. If your business logo hasn’t changed from the time it was painted on the walls in the 2000s, then it’s time for both the paint and logo to be revamped.

While no one expects you to repaint your walls each year with the Pantone Color of the Year, a customer does like to see that your business is taking itself seriously. Staying with trends isn’t just about aesthetics — you want to make sure that your paint job gives an accurate visual display of your business’ professionalism, sense of pride, and standards of customer service.

Wallpaper borders that resemble your grandmother’s couch, for example, could lead a customer to think that your business is outdated, decaying, and unsuccessful. An outdated office paint job can affect your credibility, how seriously you are taken, how confident a customer will feel selecting your business. Inspire confidence by making sure your business’ external appearance matches the quality of service a customer desires.

To freshen up

While the standard rule is to repaint your office every 3-4 years, it does depend on the level of activity in a room and the original paint job. If you initially just slapped on a couple of cheap coats of paint so you could get in business, it’s likely that paint job is starting to show with fading from the sunlight, cracks or peeling from the humidity, and spots that just didn’t receive enough coverage. Professional office painters with high-quality paint can make a huge difference in how a wall looks and how long that paint job lasts.

Some areas will need to be repainted more than others. If your waiting room walls are covered in handprints from little kids, for example, those walls might need new paint before the back office that nobody uses. Hands leave an oily residue, moving furniture can leave scuffs in the hallways, and the office kitchen walls might have the scent of curry locked in with the paint. The high-traffic areas that see more wear and tear are going to need new paint more often. And since it’s likely those areas are the ones seen most by customers, that means it is even more important to keep those walls looking fresh.

So, what does your current office paint job say about your business?

Does your choice of color make your offices seem cramped or open? Warm and welcoming or cold and ambivalent? As a business owner, you have more than enough things on your to-do list to keep you busy, but it is a wise idea to make room on that list for an excellent interior paint job to keep your office walls current, clean, and representative of your brand.